We're sitting in the departure lounge in Toronto, waiting to fly to Hong Kong, and then on to Kathmandu. It's been a whirlwind few weeks, and it's great to be checked in and on our way at last. I'm so excited to be returning!
I'm leading another NepalAbility team to Nepal for 3 weeks. Jamie (physiotherapist), Sylvia (occupational therapist) and Pauline (rehab nurse) and I will be training and mentoring local rehab staff at three hospitals in Nepal. We all work at Toronto Rehab's Lyndhurst Hospital for Spinal Cord Injury (SCI) – in fact the rest of the team have a lot more experience working with SCI than I do!
We will start at Tansen Mission Hospital, an acute care centre that NepalAbility has been working with to develop more rehab options before discharge, particularly for those who need neuro-rehabilitation – after stroke, brain injury and SCI. The rehab staff there are keen to have more options to treat people who come in with such complicated conditions. At Green Pastures Hospital (where I lived and worked in 08/09) we will work alongside the staff to mentor and improve skills in SCI rehab. We will end our time in Nepal at the Spinal Injury Rehab Centre in Kathmandu, giving a two-day practical workshop on SCI and general rehab techniques to staff from around Nepal. These will be co-led by our team and local experts. We are really excited about the trip and look forward to working with Nepali professionals at all of these centres. If you missed the newsletter I emailed out in early Oct, you can download it here.
There was exciting news out of Nepal today – the government has reached an agreement about how to re-integrate the Maoist fighters, who have been living in camps ever since the peace treaty signed in 2006 after the decade long insurgency. This has been a problematic issue to resolve, and since I experienced the election in 2008, there have been 4 different prime ministers leading the constitutional assembly. There's been lots of disagreement, and not much progress, so to hear an agreement is made is very promising. The current prime minister is a is a moderate Maoist, and seems to be able to get the different sides to actually talk together, a huge step in Nepali politics. He was educated at a rural school run by a Christian NGO in the 60's, and it's encouraging to see what a good educational background can do to create leaders in this country that so desperately needs them! For us, the most important implication is that we are less likely to encounter strikes that complicate our plans while we're in Nepal now that this agreement has been reached – though of course one never knows in Nepal!
I'm looking forward to sharing this journey with you again. We have 12 hours in Hong Kong, and hope to get out and explore a bit. We'll take pictures!
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